


Control

by notsafeforowls



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pyromania
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 01:58:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14125638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsafeforowls/pseuds/notsafeforowls
Summary: The thing that hits Mick every time is how different it feels.(Takes place after and contains slight spoilers for "I, Ava.")





	Control

The thing that hits Mick every time is how different it feels. Usually, the pyromania starts to whisper to him whenever there’s even a hint of a flame, and it builds until he can’t think about anything else, until Mick can’t fight it anymore, and everything goes up in smoke and crumbles to ashes. 

This is...

It’s fire in the palm of his hand, and he holds it carefully, lets it grow with a thought until it’s big enough and close enough to his face that it should be burning him. It doesn’t, though. Mick can barely feel the heat, but the satisfaction is the same. It feels halfway between a flame, and halfway between part of himself. It responds to his every thought immediately (he’s only let himself wonder once what his life would have been like if he’d been able to do this the night he burned his house down, even just enough to save his mother.)

Mick lets out a long, slow breath, and thinks  _smaller_ and watches the flames shrink and flicker.

Zari stands at the table with her arms folded. 

“Don’t burn it,” she says, pointing to the target. “Just get the edges a little. Like with the pancakes - thanks, by the way. They were nice.”

“I made too many.” It’s not like Mick’s going to tell her that he made extra out of habit. The Professor had liked them as a midnight snack when he couldn’t sleep. He’d just happened to make them near sundown, too (that’s his story and he swore Gideon to secrecy.)

He grows the flame as he pictures it, twisting it until it’s tuching his left hand as well, splitting it down the middle and letting them reach for the target. He keeps them narrow, ropelike, snakelike (like the snake in the stories Haircut likes to tell when Mick sticks around in the lab) and they just barely skim the edges of the target before Mick draws them back. The base of the flames never leave his hands.

He smells the singed plastic before Zari even checks the target.

“Not bad. But let’s see if you can do it when I’m trying to divert the flames.”

She holds her hands up in a challenge, and Mick smirks.

He’s never set foot inside a college, never even graduated high school, but Mick knows some things better than anyone else; he knows how to feed a fire, how to kill it, how to contain it. He knows how it feels when it’s out of control.

This? This is perfect control.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm mickroryed on Tumblr.


End file.
